News

On 11 December 2013, HRH Prince Constantijn will present Prince Claus Awards to Hivos partners Teater Garasi, a performing arts lab in Indonesia, and Oscar Muñoz, co-founder and artistic director of the Lugar a Dudas arts centre in Cali, Colombia.

The Prince Claus Awards honour outstanding achievements in the field of culture and development. The awards are presented annually to individuals, groups and organisations whose cultural actions have a positive impact on the development of their societies, especially in regions where resources or opportunities for cultural expression and production are limited.

Teater Garasi (1993, Yogyakarta) is a performing arts laboratory created and run by a multi-disciplinary collective of artists who have been modernising Indonesian theatre for over 20 years. Constantly experimenting with new forms and ideas, the collective draws on diverse elements of local culture, such as ancient legends, contemporary poetry, television, folk traditions, rock music, historical events and street life.

Teater Garasi is honoured for their groundbreaking work in stimulating performance arts in South East Asia, their diverse body of innovative and immersive productions that challenge ideas and engage a wide public, and for celebrating the complex nature of Indonesian society.

Hivos has supported Teater Garasi since 2010 within the Expression & Engagement programme. With this programme, Hivos supports cultural (co)productions by aiding art education and workshops, stimulating new talent, setting up or supporting national and international cultural exchange projects, and by further professionalising (local) cultural organisations.

Oscar Muñoz

Oscar Muñoz was born in 1951, in Popayán, Colombia. His parents always encouraged artistic practice, and the year after he finished high school, he graduated from the Fine Arts Academy in Cali, Colombia, where he still lives and works now.

In his work as a visual artist, Muñoz uses unusual and unorthodox techniques and materials, such as human breath, dust, or images of obituaries of victims of drug trafficking or political conflicts, to call attention to the precarious nature of human life or question the role of image and its consumption through the media. His work blurs the boundaries between photography, printmaking, drawing, installation, video and sculpture.

In ‘Aliento’ (Respiration, 1995-2002) the viewer breathes onto seemingly blank mirrors to reveal obituary portraits, momentarily bringing them back to life. The video ‘Re/trato’ (2004) shows the artist’s struggle to draw a self-portrait in water on a hot pavement where the lines evaporate before he can complete the image. In other works, faces printed with ashes on water slowly deform and disappear as the water drains away, or, using video, are reversed and re-formed in continuous loops.

Oscar Muñoz is the co-founder (2006) and artistic director of Lugar a Dudas (Room for Doubts) in Cali. This centre, an open access space with an archive, library, artists’ residencies and a laboratory for research and critical analysis, has activated and revitalised local culture. The organisation is known and respected for their support for a new, young generation of artists, while at the same time instigating and leading the critical debate on the role of art in society. Since 2011, Lugar a Dudas has been supported by the worldwide Hivos-Doen Arts Collaboratory programme for visual arts and social innovation.